Posted
by
timothy
on Sunday June 13, 2010 @04:26PM
from the new-measure-of-software-completeness dept.

adeelarshad82 writes "According to a message posted to a public mailing list dedicated to Chrome OS, a new feature is in the works that will grant users access to 'legacy PC applications' through some kind of remote desktop connection process. Google software engineer Gary Kamark, who first spilled the beans on the feature, calls the process 'Chromoting.' The current speculation amongst Chrome enthusiasts is that the Chromoting process is more akin to a VPN/sharing functionality than anything else. In that case, one would have to leave one's Windows-based desktop or laptop system on in order to access apps via a connected Chrome OS computer — which is hardly a technological leap given that numerous applications today offer users an analogous screen-sharing / remote access functionality."

If they make it go through their authentication systems instead of publishing an external IP address that could be a lot safer - ie, as long as the computer's properly protected and access is limited to the appropriate IP range it shouldnt pose any greater risk than running a legacy app on a computer you're sitting at

This is really a diversion from the real application:
Chrome OS with an advanced integrated Wine implementation.

All the goodness of Linux with a measure of "backwards compatibility" - because that is what general users want.
General users like the idea of Linux, but fear they will have to learn something new (OpenOffice is _so_ much different than MSOffice of course...).

I still remember fondly the Slax "Kill Bill Edition" back from 2005 - it had some wine integration.
The new target for Linux though

That's a matter of opinion. I may not be representative of the general public but for a variety of reasons OS X doesn't work for me so my Mac Pro got set up to dual boot OS X and Kubuntu.
While I am a geek I was surprised to find the wife and kids almost always choose to use Kubuntu day to day, even though the default is OS X. In fact about the only thing the kids use OS X for is Lego software.

If Google wants to do this right they should just make Wine work well enough to run the most important specialist Windows applications. Later on Chrome can support virtual machines from Googles server.

I think the idea here is to provide attractive functionality at a disguised cost. Once Apple switched over to Intel processors, anyone could run Windows on their Macs. But hardly anyone did, because who wants to reboot so often?

This will be touted the same way: "Keep your Windows apps!" But in the end, everyone will wind up using Google Docs, Gmail, etc. And that's just how Google wants it.

Just about everyone I know with a mac now runs parallels or VM Ware Fusion with Windows XP or Windows 7. Every mac in our office usually as the OSX Dock on the left/right of the screen and the windows start bar at the bottom running in Unity or whatever mode. Only bad part is remember in which app you need to control click versus Apple+Click.

What would be different is making this easy enough for a typical user to do, and reliable enough to be practical. Apple has tried to do this with Back To My Mac, but that still has enough technical gotchas in most cases to be impractical for most people.

Or 10 years ago on an iPaq [wikipedia.org]. Or 23 years ago on an NCD [wikipedia.org]. And I'll bet someone will be out in a moment to tell me to get off their lawn and come up with an earlier example.

Or 35 years ago on a VT52 [wikipedia.org] (though to be fair, back then you more or less HAD to use some sort of remote access because the computer itself was such a huge, noisy beast that nobody in their right mind would want to be in the same room for any length of time)

Oh, they intend to implement remote control of another computer functionality. Whats the news in this, you can even do this on a iphone!

Indeed, it's a bit of a hack for backwards compatibility. To be honest, if I had to use remote desktop to access such apps then I'd use Open Cobalt as my 'desktop', since that uses VNC for 'legacy' apps, including XDMCP to spawn new instances as needed, and having a multi-user, p2p 3D desktop is more futuristic than everything in the brwser IMHO.

The iPad has a pretty nice Microsoft Remote Desktop client that I use when I need to quickly build a Windows project, or view logs from one of our Windows servers. Not really a complete solution, as obviously the standard bandwidth limits apply. If I'm on 3G or slow wifi it's borderline unusable. Still nice to have the option I suppose.

Not sure why someone would want to invest in an OS that needs to emulate, or remote into others to get some benefit of another OS (windows or otherwise). Seems like if you need to do that, why not just use the OS you are remoting/emulating?

I've been using nomachine's [nomachine.com]
server and client for years over Verizon 3G and it works fantastically.
And since Google's nx stuff seems to be based on nomachine's
I can't imagine it will be worse but probably even better.

"We're adding new capabilities all the time. With this functionality (unofficially named "chromoting"), Chrome OS will not only be great platform for running modern web apps, but will also enable you to access legacy PC applications right within the browser. We'll have more details to share on chromoting in the coming months."

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 2:02 AM, PhistucK wrote:Since you are being quiet about it, I just want to understand - isChromoting something like Remote Desktop Connection?

Yes. "something like..."

Can you spare some more details regarding this component? use cases,platform support?

Does it -need- to be done though? We could also implement VNC running through WINE piping output through a serial port being encoded by an Arduno and then sent back upside down which is in turn flipped over by a BASIC script. That doesn't mean that it is always a good idea to do things a weird way when native apps usually work better.

Not only does this sound clunky and sub-optimal in many regards, but why should I need to utilize two computers at once to enjoy functionality that only requires a single computer? At the very least it is energy inefficient.

I would hazard a guess that Google's spin will be that you login with your google login and password, and it finds your machines IP address and connects you, or offers a list of machines to which you have a right to connect...

It's because they are desperate to give people a reason - any reason - to look at the upcoming chrome-browser-based welfarebooks. Just buy a real laptop - you'll save enough energy over the life of the machine to pay for not having to leave a second computer on all the time.

I am hoping that the more remote desktop usages surge, the more that our ISP will give us enough up bandwidth to make use of our computers wherever they are at.

I have a terabyte usb hard drive at home attached to my media center. Unfortunately, it is one of 4 hard drives and I did not have the foresight to only put tv shows and movies that I want and that no one else in my family would miss if I took it with me.

Just buy a real laptop - you'll save enough energy over the life of the machine to pay for not having to leave a second computer on all the time.

Hrm... maybe. Maybe not.

My last electricity bill was $0.0618/kWh, but let's round up to $0.07. My quad-core computer, monitor, and external RAID use about 150W at idle, according to my UPS; a lower-end computer with no RAID and the monitor turned off would use less, but let's ignore that. My i3 laptop cost about $700, but let's say you can find a decent one for $600. And since we're looking at the cost of a "real laptop" vs. a Chrome OS netbook, let's subtract $350, which is the speculated mid-range price o

I don't think that matters. I personally run a UPS, but not everyone does.

You're going to be using it at some point, so you can't take just the base draw as the total draw - otherwise, why have a computer? So the system sitting at home is not always going to be idling.

I was using it when I took the measurements - I meant "idle" as opposed to startup or heavy load. Heavy loads would mean hardcore gaming or number crunching, which you can't really do on a laptop anyway.

You're also ignoring the extra cooling costs because of that 150 watt heater. That's an additional 500 btus of load.

That translates into something like an extra 40 watts needed to run the air conditioner, using the minimum U.S. standard for residential A/C efficiency. I can save 40 watts just by turning off my monitor.

Well you could have one powerhouse of a server running flat-out and many lightweight clients (ARM chips are very power efficient) connected to it as clients. Might draw a lot less power than the traditional 'many moderately powered machines running local apps' setup

but why should I need to utilize two computers at once to enjoy functionality that only requires a single computer?

Welcome to the world of proprietary platforms.

Right, because open platforms all interoperate and don't compete with each other at all.Go try a hybrid Gnome/KDE desktop environment on OpenNetSolarisBSDixURD for a few weeks and prove me wrong. Want to play open platform bingo with me?

Right, because open platforms all interoperate and don't compete with each other at all.

Huh? That wasn't even the topic. We were talking about having to use two computers to enjoy functionality that only really requires one computer. At the very least, you can log out of KDE and into GNOME. At best, KDE and GNOME cooperate on many levels, sharing systray, DBUS, etc.

It will help a lot of people to have an easy to use remote desktop solution. Remove all of the client/server terminology to the end user. Just run this chromotion program on your windows pc and have the chrome station auto detect it. You privacy kooks are going to hate me for saying this: use the google cloud servers as an authentication and discovery proxy. The average slightly technical person eats this stuff up.

It's not Apple... MS is fine with you buying a Windows license for the machine you are remoting into. I suspect Apple is pretty okay with it to. MS hasn't really ever tried to stop the likes of VNC, PC-Anywhere, GoToMyPC, etc. I do think this is pretty much non-news though. Unless they add a value like the auto-proxy that gotomypc does. Remote desktop does work pretty well as it stands. I don't know the cost of terminal server licensing for windows, but for organizations with this kind of push, it may be worthwhile. I've been a proponent for remote desktop agents for a while now, as you can tighten down security into a very narrow secured port that has access to a remote desktop server (linux or windows). Don't have to worry about a stolen laptop compromising, when all that is on it is a remote client that doesn't save passwords.

I don't know the cost of terminal server licensing for windows, but for organizations with this kind of push, it may be worthwhile.

Like most MS products, the cost looks quite reasonable if you start off relatively small with, say, SBS, and upgraded as your needs have changed - or you're used to paying through the nose for licensing.

Which, to be fair, is true for probably 95+% of businesses.

For others, Windows TS complete with all appropriate CALs starts to look very expensive very quickly - and unlike many aspects of Windows licensing, CALs in use are actively tracked by a DRM module.

I haven't been following chrome OS much**, but if I wanted to run "legacy apps" on a more controlled OS these days, in a secure way, I'd do it in a virtual machine. A lot of them, especially recent ones, support RDP and/or VNC, which might fulfill the term "remote access".

** Well, come on, yet another run-a-monolithic-GUI-WIMP-app-OS, from one of the biggest software houses on the planet? Snoozefest. How about something REALLY innovative?

For what it's worth, an injection of cash will get you most of those features (or an illegal BT downloaded keygen, not that I recommend it). VMWare Workstation gives you DirectX, copy-paste, normal-looking taskbar entries (complete with icons and names), good mouse integration, etc. I used it many times so I could do my homework in actual Word (in a Win2k8 VM (it's free if you're a student)) while programming on Linux (rebooting sucks). The only thing that doesn't work is drag-and-drop between Windows and L

I'm hoping to see something like Joanna Rutkowska's Qubes come to fruition - http://qubes-os.org/Architecture.html [qubes-os.org]. It allows the creation of lightweight VMs to run a specific app.Much more useful, if it's as quick as she claims. It's Linux-based for the moment.

I'm getting really bored with all the hype flowing from Google lately. What with Chrome OS and Google TV, there seems to be an awful lot of fuss being made over what in both cases is essentially vaporware. Anyone having tried the latest Chromium OS builds (the code base from which Chrome OS will be built) will see that this project has a very long way to go before it is anything like usable.

Look at it: it's just an OS with everything but the browser stripped out. You know what? Those other parts were actually useful and stripping them out makes no sense. GNU/Linux can run a browser just fine; it can also run quite a lot of Windows programs through Wine without the need for any kind of remoting. So, Chrome can run under Windows? Well, guess what... Linux can do that too. And it can run all the native applications out there, which by and large yield a better user experience (not to mention perfo

Look at it: it's just an OS with everything but the browser stripped out. You know what? Those other parts were actually useful and stripping them out makes no sense. GNU/Linux can run a browser just fine; it can also run quite a lot of Windows programs through Wine without the need for any kind of remoting. So, Chrome can run under Windows? Well, guess what... Linux can do that too. And it can run all the native applications out there, which by and large yield a better user experience (not to mention performance) than a browser-based app can. Don't even think about 3D games. Sometimes less is simply less.

Think iPad, not "Windows equivalent".

The point is to make an ultralight OS for netbooks and such that boots fast, lasts long on a single charge, and lets people access cloud-based services. Whether ChromeOS can do all that successfully remains to be seen, but its goal was never to compete heads-on with Windows, but more to challenge and perhaps supersede the likes of MeeGo, Jolicloud, and "instant-on" secondary OSes from laptop manufacturers (Asus ExpressGate, Dell Latitude On, etc.). Granted, cloud computing may one day bypass traditional OSes altogether -- and ChromeOS may be a stepping stone to that -- but even if that doesn't happen, ChromeOS may still be useful.

From one perspective (the current one for power users), it might look like "Why would I want to limit myself to online apps when there are so many good desktop ones?"

But from another perspective (that of simple users and perhaps all of us in the future), the question might be "Why would I want to bother with Office 2012 when Google Docs 2012 is just as good, free, and never needs to be patched?" As more and more programs move to the cloud, the underlying OS becomes less and less important and can, after a while, start getting in the way. Why load the entire bloat of Windows when all you really want to do is check your email and maybe look at a few PDFs?

The two perspectives may well become blurrier as web applications become richer and smarter and their data and processing become hybridized, half in the cloud and half on the desktop. Already Gmail can cache its data on your hard drive while getting its code from the cloud, giving you offline access, faster searches, and an always-up-to-date version with zero maintenance. For web games, once browsers get better hardware-accelerated 3D (through Flash, HTML5, or otherwise), a lot of the code could be maintained and stored online while rarely-updated data like graphics and sound can be downloaded once and stored offline. Think Valve's Steam or Microsoft's ClickOnce but without the overhead of Windows.

Anyway, the popularity of simple internet-connected devices like netbooks and iPads proves that such devices ARE welcome even if they can't do everything a full-blown uber-rig can. ChromeOS may not be a technological revolution or even a significant change in paradigm, but if it alters the end-user experience significantly enough, THAT's all that matters. If you can get a netbook with ChromeOS that boots in 5 seconds flat, lasts 15 hours on a charge, and costs $150... wow. That's a pipe dream right now, but there's hope. At the very least, it'd be great to see ChromeOS packaged as a plug-in OS; a self-contained fast-boot environment on a USB stick or ExpressCard for everyone who already has Windows but doesn't need its power most of the time.

A more valid complaint would be "But isn't that what Android's supposed to do?" To a certain degree, yes, but even the best Android browsers currently lack the power and customizability of Chrome or Firefox, and the Android UI isn't optimized for a keyboard-and-mouse experience. Google said they eventually plan to merge ChromeOS and Android, but until that happens, they're still targeted at subtly different niches. Perhaps Google also wants ChromeOS to be centrally-controlled the way Chrome (the browser) currently is and not the way Android is (centrally built but then haphazardly adopted and modified by third parties, drastically altering user experience and delaying updates).

I'm getting really bored with all the hype flowing from Google lately. What with Chrome OS and Google TV, there seems to be an awful lot of fuss being made over what in both cases is essentially vaporware. Anyone having tried the latest Chromium OS builds (the code base from which Chrome OS will be built) will see that this project has a very long way to go before it is anything like usable.

Agreed. I also don't really understand the appeal of Chrome OS - it's only a browser. If this gets you excited, install the Chrome browser and fullscreen it - tadda!

This would be true, if Apple couldn't sell a new version of phone even with the fact it can't play mp3s as ringtones.

Why remote access seems to every techie the most normal thing in the world, its a whole different ball game getting it to a level in which my mum can understand it. If they can get this right then she wont care that she could of done it 10 years ago with some other software.

I think what Google is doing is providing technology is average users that can be supported by a primarily ad based model. Google grew up in time when the world was becoming wired up, and Google was able to use that increased networking, primarily paid for by external public and private sources, to grow a business model. In a fully connected world, with clock cycles costing infinitesimal amounts of money, it is now possible to provide centralized compter resources in exchange for ads. This provides value to the end user as he or she no longer needs to administer the resources. The technological advance, as in so many cases of large companies, is the ability to deliver a service at a lower cost.

This was what MS did in the days prior to the widespread internet. It provided software, only some of which was purchased, that could be freely installed on business machines. This provided an alternative to Unix hardware and software, all which had to be paid for, often at what we would now consider exorbitant prices. Of course, there were things that MS stuff could not do. We have gone full circle in that MS now wants $500 for software, while Apple is selling software for $30, and most stuff for Unix is free.

What people want is service, the technical details are of little concern. I can change any song into a ringtone for my iPhone. The fact that it is a fake m4a instead of an mp3 is of no concern. What is of a concern is that ringtones have never cost me a thing on the iPhone. If I am looking at $100 for a fake copy of MS Office, and $300 for MS Windows that will constantly hound me to prove that it is a legitimate copy, then perhaps running a copy of chrome with Google hosting all my documents is a rational thing to do. We can complain that it old tech, but it is only the early adopters that a fetishizing new tech enough to actually spend huge amounts of money on it.

There is a lot of this shit going on. *If* this is a usable VNC client that creates an easy to set up and easy to use solution for running windoze apps on Chrome this is a big deal.It takes *work* and *skill* to make existing technology/software usable and attractive. That's why Apple is doing well, if it was easy everyone would be doing it. Please everyone just understand this simple fact.

Umm, guys? How this works is just speculation, ripping on it for just being a VPN or damning it for being a reimplementation of existing stuff is like bitching about the plot of a movie before they've even released a summary, let alone the script or the movie itself.

Another possibility is that Google ports something like VirtualBox over to Chrome OS. The virtualized display could then be exported to the Chrome web browser. This way only one computer would be required. In addition, any OS could be installed - not just Windows.

Of course this would only work with x86 based computers, but those requiring legacy support could easily limit themselves to these computers. Those who do not need legacy support could select an ARM based computer. The ARM based hardware sho

It's exactly the sort of leap that Apple inexplicably get a good press for doing, even though they're not first either. Even nerds aren't interested in `first` or `advanced` any more - it's got to be easy.

It's exactly the sort of leap that Apple inexplicably get a good press for doing, even though they're not first either. Even nerds aren't interested in `first` or `advanced` any more - it's got to be easy.

You make it sound like the "easy" requirement is new. A technology that a person can't actually use has always been worthless to that person. There is nothing inexplicable about that.

"When I first read about Chromoting I was hoping it'd be something more along the lines of OnLive - i.e, the 'legacy' programs are running on super-powerful remote machines," wrote Mark Lunney, a Flash Developer for Glue London.
"Google could set up a pay-per-use license with the software manufactures to allow them to be used remotely, which'd also cut piracy down. And the thought of rendering an entire 3D scene or movie on one of Google's supercomputers in seconds would surely be enough of a reason to get

Why not run native? It would be ok for at least basic apps depending on hardware power. My understanding is Chrome has debian underpinnings at this point. To the point that getting WINE to run on it would not be considered pass marks for a geek card.

If you want to run Windows apps natively on chrome it's going to certainly be possible and will be solved within hours of the OS hitting production.

"Called RemoteFX, the update to Remote Desktop Services enables hardware-accelerated graphics and the use of local USB devices for a remote user connected to a virtual machine (VM). RemoteFX is based on desktop virtualization software acqu

Talk about bloat. Now you need an extra big server and 1Gb internet just as a bad replacement for what you could already do before. Specifically for a gaming solution, this is a terrible and impractical idea typical of Microsoft marketing departments worst failures.

For any game where quick reflexes matter (i.e. most), the extra latency when compared to running the same game locally would be terrible. Also I don't think any internet service yet offers even 100mpbs to the home affordably, let alone 1 gig.